Terri Connett

Fast-forward, please!

For me, birthdays rank right up there with root canals. But that’s all gonna change a year from now. You see, this past Earth Day I celebrated birthday number 64. And never since I made it through the insufferably long year prior to my sixteenth birthday and my awesome driver’s license, have I been more excited to get closer to the grave!

Social Security and Medicare will be the guests of honor at my big splash of a party next year.

The plan to work until retirement-age was crapped all over by corporate America. And along with that, came the cherry-on-top-of-the-turd cancellation of my employer-subsidized health care. But I’m one of the lucky ones who could tap into my savings and also draw a pension for these past five years to stay afloat; despite big ass mortgage payments and monster health care premiums.

And so while I daydream about financial breathing room and paid cataract surgery, I also fantasize about skipping over a year’s worth of our American humiliation.

That is, Donald Jagoff Trump.

The Pied Piper of Hate has unearthed all things ugly and un-American. Trump inexplicably convinces a bottomless number of Republicans to blindly prop up his lies and loathing. His followers are delusional. They’re gullible. They’re fools. And some, I assume, are good people.

But because they don’t have the sense to stop short of plunging over the cliff, the rest of us have to do something. So please join me in hitting the fast-forward button and getting us all to the other side.

Turn off all your media. Slip into your soft clothes. Dim the lights and put on some Bob Marley or Kendrick Lamar or whatever transports you to your happy place.

And take a nice, deep breath.

Ah.

In future world, because we all voted, Democrats took both the House and Senate in November of 2018. Subsequently Nancy Pelosi, who deserves a lot of credit for passing the Affordable Care Act; blah, blah, blah, decided to retire.

And so, Representative John R. Lewis (D-Ga.) was unanimously voted to become the first African American Speaker of the House.

In the hazy days of summer 2019, Trump was found guilty of collusion, obstruction, corruption, collaboration, manipulation, urination, and plain-old treason. He sits in jail without hair glue, tanning privileges and Mickey D cheeseburgers.

And because the election was deemed illegitimate, Mike and Mother Pence are gone too. Along with that fucking Marlon Bundo.

So, in the fall of 2019, second-in-line to the presidency, Speaker of the House, John R. Lewis, becomes our forty-sixth U.S. President. He will serve until Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, when our forty-seventh, and most likely Democratic, President begins her or his term.

During President Lewis’ 14 months in office, several people’s heads exploded. Literally. Richard Spencer, David Duke, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Steve King, Alex Jones, Anne Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, that manager chick at Starbucks and all those tiki torch guys in Charlottesville simultaneously went up in a puff of smoke.

Gone.

And the Rapture came early too, but only for those evangelical Christians who twisted their prayer circles into knots in order to overlook Trump’s infidelities with three wives, payoffs to porn stars and playmates, nonstop lying, racism, pettiness, lack of humility, filthy language, and overall skeeziness.

In a flash they all went to heaven. Or the new embassy in Jerusalem. I’m not sure where exactly.